December Park(65)

After a moment, Scott cranked the transistor, and soon we had an AM oldies station to keep us company. The reception was horrible, and Scott kept the volume low, but at least it was something.

“I wonder if it’s anyone we know,” Scott said. He used the blade of his butterfly knife to scrape the dirt out from beneath his fingernails.

“Who?” Peter said.

“The killer. The guy who got Courtney Cole. And the others.”

“Possibly the others,” Michael added. He was laying on his back now, his hands laced behind his head and his army helmet on his stomach, rising and falling with his respiration. “We don’t know that for sure.”

“You sound just like the goddamn news,” Scott scolded. “Is it so impossible to believe?” He turned to me. “What does your dad think?”

“He thinks it’s the same person,” I said, “but the cops don’t have any real proof.”

“What else did your dad say?”

“That’s about it. He didn’t seem like he really wanted to talk about it.”

“Man, you gotta ask him for some details,” Scott said.

“I went snooping through his work papers. Isn’t that enough?”

“You gotta ask him if he has any suspects,” Scott continued. “Find out if he has any idea who it might be.”

“Leave Angie alone,” Peter said. “His dad ain’t gonna tell him anything important. That shit’s all confidential, anyway.”

Scott feigned a jab at Peter with his butterfly knife.

“You’re pretty tough sitting all the way—” Peter quickly shut his mouth as Scott flung the knife at him. It pinwheeled through the air before planting itself, blade down, in the dirt between Peter’s sneakers. “Holy shit! You could have killed me!”

Scott laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“You could have cut my f*cking balls off.”

Scott laughed harder. “What balls?”

Michael sat up and grinned. He had his mirrored sunglasses back on, and he looked like someone enjoying a day at the beach.

“Dickhead,” Peter said, plucking the knife from the ground. He examined the blade, then attempted to flip it shut. He managed to do it on the third try, but it wasn’t nearly as graceful as when Scott did it.

“What if it isn’t a man?” Scott spoke up.

“What do you mean?” Peter said. “Like, it could be a woman?”

Michael shook his head. “That’s horseshit. Chicks don’t have the balls to pull off this kinda madness.”

“Literally,” commented Peter.

“I’m serious. Only men can be that sadistic. You ever hear of a female serial killer?”

“Aileen Wuornos,” Scott said without missing a beat.

“Shut up,” Michael said. “You made that up.”

“Did not. She killed a bunch of guys and was arrested a few years ago.”

Michael waved a hand at him. “Well, it sounds like bullshit to me. And, anyway, I’d bet anything that the Cole girl was . . . I don’t know . . . raped or . . . like, molested or something . . .”

“She wasn’t,” I said.

“Yeah? How the hell would you know?”

“Because I read the coroner’s report, dummy.”

“Anyway, I didn’t mean that the killer’s a woman,” Scott said. “But what if the killer is something that’s . . . maybe not human . . .”

“What’s that mean?” Peter said.

“Maybe there’s something else here in town taking everyone.”

“This isn’t one of your horror movies,” Peter told him.

Michael piped up: “I once read a story about a rogue lion in Africa that went around killing villagers. The thing would wait for someone to go wandering off from the rest of the tribe and then attack. It was almost human in how it hunted. You know, like it waited for the right time and everything. Creepy as hell.”

“Or like an alligator or something,” Peter suggested.

Across the clearing, Adrian nodded almost imperceptibly. “I’ve heard about alligators in some areas getting really big and eating children. It happens down south a lot. They put up big fences around the yards in Louisiana to keep the alligators out.”

“Or the sewers,” Scott said. “Like that movie we saw at the Juniper. The one where someone flushed a baby alligator down the toilet, and it lived in the sewers eating all kinds of stuff—”

“Like turds,” Michael interjected, chuckling.

“—until it got so big that it broke through the street and started eating all those people.”

“Whoa,” said Adrian. “Cool.”

“It was awesome,” Scott assured him.

“Don’t forget about the Chesapeake Bay,” Michael said. “Man, there could be anything living down there.”

“Like that story Angie wrote about Chessie,” Peter said.

“What’s Chessie?” Adrian asked.

“It’s the Chesapeake Bay version of the Loch Ness Monster,” I said. “It’s a myth, like Bigfoot.”

“That shit’s real,” Michael contested, jabbing a finger at me, then sliding his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose. “Chessie’s no myth. Uncle of mine saw it a few years ago at the Cape locks, right here in town—two big humps rising out of the water. Swear to God.”